Courses Offered
June-July 2008

Lucky Jim with Carole Braverman

The Merchant of Venice with Tom Kane

Fiction Writing with Kate McQuade

A French Village with Hale Sturges

Creative Writing with Paul Tortorella

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A note on procedure:
The Andover Again courses do not "meet" in the conventional sense. All of the activity - assignments, discussion, commentary - takes place in the course section of AndoverAgain Moodle. Participants come and go as their schedules permit, responsible only for keeping up with the flow of the course and making comments in the forums.

Courses Offered Summer 2008

Lucky Jim with Carole Braverman, English Instructor, Emeritus
Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim, set at a second rate college in the British boonies in the 1950’s, is one of the great comic novels, not only because it’s wonderfully funny, but because of its variety of comic technique--from the sharply satiric, to the set pieces that border on farce, to the language itself, as finely honed and layered with ironies as a Jane Austen novel. Amis doesn’t take on the huge evils, but he can be savagely precise about the inauthentic in all its forms--academic life, male-female relationships, artists, the gaps between meaning and subtext, between the public and the private self. The divided self of Jim Dixon, our flawed and hilarious hero, can so astutely mirror our own petty compromises—it can make you feel exposed in the very act of laughter. Buy Lucky Jim.
      We’ll discuss the book as literature, as human comedy, and as cultural artifact of the fifties. In comparing one of the scenes from the novel to the script for the BBC mini series, we’ll also take a brief look at the art of adaptation.
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Fiction Writing with Kate McQuade, PA English Department
In this reprise of Kate's successful course from last year, participants submit weekly writing, either short stories or portions of longer work, for critique by others in the course, and by Kate McQuade, author of the novel Two Harbors (Harcourt). Length of weekly submissions is limited to 1200 words. Participants may continue to use the web space to work with each other after the six-week course is over, although Kate McQuade will no longer be present. Enrollment in this course is limited to ten alumni/ae.
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Portrait of a French Village with Hale Sturges, French Instructor Emeritus
This is a course based upon the more eternal aspects of a course I taught for twenty years at Andover and a book I wrote a few years ago about a village named Pleure. I spent a sabbatical winter in this small village on the western plain of the Jura. My objective was to integrate myself into the fabric of the town in order to understand how it works and whether it would survive the push into the twenty-first century. This, then, is at once both a sociological study and a personal narrative. I hope that by reading it you will gain a greater understanding of France and the French.
      The People of Pleure: Portrait of a French Village may be purchased on line from the publisher or from Amazon. During the course I shall post questions for discussion based upon the book. I shall also post other references and links as the course evolves and will always welcome any contributions of this sort that you may have. A further adjunct to this course may be an optional PA alumni boat trip to a variety of villages and sites along the Rhone canal which could be preceded by a short visit to Pleure for those who participate in the course.
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The Politics and Ethics of The Merchant of Venice with Tom Kane, P.A. English Department
John Keats coined the term ‘negative capability’ to describe the manner in which what he considered great art (aka Shakespeare) fostered the ability to ‘be in uncertainties.’ First performed in 1596 as a comedy, Shakespeare’s transitional play, The Merchant of Venice now is most commonly read as a tragedy of Shylock, the Jewish moneylender. How has the play reflected the shifting history in which it has been performed and how can a comedy become a tragedy? We will read the play with at least three different lenses, tilting the audience sympathies and testing how comfortable we might be with Keats’ notion of negative capability, asking if there is an obligation to certain representations. Put in other terms, we will test the correctness of the play’s politics and our own: is it or are we politically correct? We will finish up by watching the only recent, post-holocaust feature film version of the play, produced in 2004, directed by Michael Radford and starring Al Pacino as Shylock. (Please don't see the film in advance.) It would be most helpful if all participants were using the Oxford University Press World Classics edition edited by Jay Halio. You can get it from Amazon.

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Creative Writing with Paul Tortorella, PA English Department
This on-line course focuses on the fundamental principles of fiction such as plot, character, structure, dialogue, and description. We will accomplish this through writing exercises and creating short pieces. Students will receive feedback from fellow participants and the instructor. We will also have an opportunity to experiment with and write poetry. No writing experience necessary: just experience.
How to sign up for this course